Can a care-based theorist support human rights?

LSE ID NUMBER: 201029209

Waiting, listening, caring

To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, when setting ones stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world. Antoine de Saint-Exupry, Wind, Sand, and Stars

Cared-based are interested in an ethic that considerer the particularly and the responsibilities among interdependent people. This ethic that emerges in the private space, saving an alternative voice of morality, should be applied for public sphere and to protect human rights. In this sense care based theorist could enriches the understanding and support human rights. However it is necessary to review the traditional way in that human rights has been understood by the dominant moral theories. This feminine approach challenges and encourages us to be more deeply in the spirit of human rights putting values such as responsibility, equity, and respect for the differences of want and needs. The ethics of care are based in the the two different moral voices that Carol Gilligan (1982) described within genders. Most of men understand moral problem from rationality and abstract principles, while most of women considering relations and, contexts. For the first group ethics is about balancing claims, and develop universal principles, while for other ethic is about taking responsibility for others and their needs, developing a morality focused in particularities and caring. Moral maturity consists in integrate both voices. Women have to recognize the need of their personal integrity, that is means the concept of equality in rights, while men have to understand the differences among persons and put reciprocity on the direction of equity. This gender differences are not essential, but related whit the historic role of the women caring children and the way that identity is build. Girls grow up near to mother, who prepares them to interdependence and relations. Boys have to separate from mother to build their male identity, and develop more autonomy and interest in the public sphere.

(Robinson, 1999 p.14) As roles are learnt, culture of care can be learnt for both genders (Nodding, 2002).

Ethic of care could be relevant in social and political life (Held, 2005 p.537). To be enriched by this model, we need a change in the traditional understanding of public ethic. Dominant moral theorists understand moral problems as a conflict between egoistic individual interest and universal moral principles. On Contrary, the ethic of care involves cooperation and well-being in the relation at itself, being neither egoistic nor altruistic. (Held, 2005 p.539). This involves some differences with dominant moral theorist. Persons are interdependent, so ethic lies in issues such as care, empathy and relationships, rather than abstract principles. (Robinson, 1999 p.11) Ethic arises in the encounter whit the need of vulnerability of other. () the weight and depth of need call forth obligation before any decision is made on exactly what to do. We accept responsibility for the Other() not to a set of a priory rules () In encounter, obligations happens. (Nodding, 2002). The obligation to cares other lies in the vulnerability of some people to our options and choices. (Robinson, 1999) People are real and concrete beings in concrete context. There are not persons in general. (Robinson, 1999 p.25) Abstract principles and the impartiality of original position of Rawls and his idea of rational life plan in narrow focused in real life (Nodding, 2002). Dominant approach looks for universal agreements that are impossible when particular cases are considered. Care-ethic involves duties among persons, mainly to the most vulnerable, including the effect of omissions. Dominant moral are worried about how our action do not interfering whit the rights of others, that could mean leave alone the other with their needs. A difference of Rawls principle of justice, the importance lies in the decisions, the real effect of our choices in others, not in the right process to achieve right principles. It is not a speculation about justice, is worried about injustice and their real effect in particular people.

Care-based ethic also is suspicious about human rights in the way that liberalism understanding them. According to dominant moral theorist and with the International convention of human rights, these are based in universality, equality, liberty and justice

(UN). However, as it was mentioned before, care-based theorist disagree of the idea of universal principles, due humans are particular being and have different needs. Likewise, while liberalism understand liberty as an individual autonomy, the right to be left to do or be what one pleases, without interfering whit others rights, to care-based theorist liberty is the freedom to be or to do what one should be do. This mean to have the control of who or what determine someone to do or be, this rather than that. (Nodding, 2002 p.80-81) To liberalism justice is about redistribution and reciprocity as equality. However to carebased theorist justice is related to injustice and human suffering. (Robinson, 1999 p.26). Furthermore, reciprocity is comprehended as equity, assuming that people have different needs, vulnerabilities and possibilities. So justice does not means that we have to responds with and equal things that we received. (Nodding, 2002 p.87) Moreover, care-based theorist claim that liberalism put a great emphasis on individual rights, eclipse the everyday demand of community and lack of a discourse of responsibilities that do not allow understanding human sociality. (Noddings,2002 p.75) Finally, ethic of care does not start from rights, since rights are usually wants, that became rights if the person or groups or person have power to acknowled these claim (Noddings, 2002 p.78) Consequently human rights are closer than aspirations of a selected group of human being; western white men. Furthermore, ()once a need has been sanctified as a right, all those who fall into that particular class of right-bearers have the right whether or not the feel a need or evince an interest. Rights protect needs, interests, and powers regardless of whether specific individuals claim them and even, in some cases, if they deny them (Noddings, 2002 p.56) Therefore, care-based theorist does not support Human Rights under dominant understanding. However, if we follow the preamble of Universal declaration of human rights, we can see that declaration as well as ethic of care is worried about issues such as protect people from injustice and suffering, respect human value, life and dignity, and promote well-being. (UN). After all, to consider in what basis cared-based theorist could support human rights, and without rejecting the language of rights, this ethic does not star with a concept of persons as right-bearers, but as organism needing care, since when life begins it is best described initially in terms of needs, not wants. As children grow, they develop wants, and these are influenced by genetic predisposition but mainly by encounter. (Nodding, 2002 p. 56, 78) The encounter is the fount of experience and some contributing to happiness while others to misery. In these encounters, when we feel the need of other. The moral action is not

only a judgment, but the natural result of empathy, that is the main motivation to morality. This is the start point in which care-based theorist can support human rights. Furthermore, this responsibility does not apply only whit our family or friends, but also with people that apparently we have no connection or we are no responsible whit their needs or suffering. However assuming that in a globalized world, all of us are interconnected, we realized that we are responsible to take care for them although they do not have apparently nothing to pay us. (Robinson, 1999, p.28). Since care-based ethic focus not in equality but equity, it encourages and justifies duties from most given people or societies to most vulnerable people or groups. Furthermore it can show that care-based theory could be applied to people around the world, being universal. However, that does not means that people have exactly the same rights, since each person or cultural group are unique and have different needs and wants. So, we have to consider the focus in the particularity. The ethics of care starts with the moral claims of particular others, () regardless of universal principles. (Held, 2005 p.538) In this way, universality could mean that all humans have the right to be in relations of care, and to be supported and the duty to care others according to their particular needs and possibilities. Nevertheless the aim of an ethic o care in not () to provide an answer to the question that plagues normative theorist of international relations: how to arrive at global universal norms/values in a world of particular and often incommensurable value systems. (Robinson, 1999 p.40) On the other hand, focusing in particularity does not mean a sort of relativism that justifies that one person can force other to receive support according to their personal interpretation of needs. These means an extra effort, since empathy can easily confused with to see the own self in the other and support the other like he/she were I. For these reason care-based theory focus in consider the other in their particularly, personal context, needs and wants. The way is waiting, listening and trusting. It can be a good orientation to the international aid interventions in human rights. Ethic of care considers positive duties, since humans are mutually responsible each for each others. The aim is building a more decent society where human rights could be a reality. Thus, this feminist international ethics does not resemble an ethical theory but rather a kind of moral phenomenology, which explores the sociopolitical conditions, the moral and psychological dispositions, the personal and social relations, and the individual and institutional strategies which may work toward overcoming exclusion and promoting care and focused moral attention on a global scale. (Robinson, 1999 p.7) Likewise the building of this ethic involves educating children in caring. However the ethic of care is not learnt by rational discourse but is an ability learnt in caring relations.

Nevertheless, care-based theorist do not support human rights in a traditional and dominant discourse, but they enriches the way in what human rights, justice and ethic have been traditionally understanding. They remember us that humans are relational and interdependent beings, so our decisions, actions and omissions affect us and others. They make us responsible for ourselves and others; firstly our family and near people, and then rest of humanity, mainly the most vulnerable. They remember us that the deep sense of human rights is avoiding injustice and human suffering and building more decent societies for all human beings. Maybe our challenge in integrate the two moral voices in the public sphere, in order to build a structure of principles where the value and need of each man be acknowledged in their particularly and where this consideration of difference be just with all others.

REFERENCES GILLIGAN, CAROL 1982 In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ROBINSON, FIONA 1999 Globalizing Care: Ethics, feminist theory, and international relations, Westview Press HELD, VIRGINIA 2005 The Ethics of Care in David Copp (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 NODDINGS, NEL 2002 Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press

Internet References UN, Universal Declaration of www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ Human Righs, ac. 7 November 2011,